Page 3 of Sunny Side Up

I stepped my polished toes in the leg holes of the first one-piece.

The red one. At least it was a fun color.

Baywatch -y. It felt stiff, and kind of spongy, like it was made of neoprene.

With my left hand on one seam and my right hand on the other, I started shimmying the suit up over my spa-slicked legs.

It snapped hard around my belly button, so I took a moment to breathe.

I could not. I was full-on sweating. The leg holes chomped down around my thighs. What the fuck?

I resumed pulling and shimmying, until I got one strap over my left shoulder and tucked an unruly boob inside the padded cup. There was no point in trying to get the right strap over my right shoulder. This suit had to be three sizes too small. What did she hand me, an eight?

I released my left boob and left strap, then twisted the suit around for a glimpse at the tag. A size fourteen ?

This had to be European sizing or something. Maybe Australian? I’d been a size twelve for most of my adult life. A fourteen in dresses, maybe, because of my chest. Ample Bosom Club. I took the suit off for closer inspection.

US: 14. AUS: 18. EU: 46.

Which meant I had to be at least a size sixteen. Extra, extra large.

I felt a wave of nausea course through me. I knew my clothes had been feeling tighter than usual, and I’d been favoring stretchy pants over jeans, but we’d just rung in the New Year, and everyone gained weight over the holidays. It was normal. It was just water weight, right?

Right??

… This could not be happening.

In the fashion world, brands simply did not make clothes above a size fourteen.

Even then, fourteen was a rarity, considered the “upper limit.” Extra, extra large.

I’d felt that way my whole life, a “maximum-sized” body, squeezing into the biggest sizes available.

But usually, those biggest sizes would at least fit-ish.

I tore the red death trap off my body and threw it to the ground.

Surely it was some kind of mistake, likely by a very depraved designer who purposefully made his swimsuits three sizes too small.

I grabbed the Pepto-Bismol pink one-piece off its hanger and checked the size: fourteen.

On its hangtag, it boasted a “hidden, figure-flattering corset.” Okay.

Let’s try again. It was made of this scrunchy knit-Lycra-elastane-I-don’t-know-what.

It was super stretchy, and the hidden corset was bendy. It had to fit. Ish.

There was no fit-ish-ing today.

By the time I’d trapped both boobs behind underwired cups that sliced them into quadrants, the violent shoulder straps had dug deep purple grooves into my skin.

Flesh popped out of every seam. You don’t even want to know what was going on with my hoo-ha.

It was a good thing I’d kept my thong on underneath, is what I’ll tell you.

I stepped closer to the mirror to examine my pale limbs, reddening face.

I’d completely lost the post-spa glow. I just looked greasy.

So much fat that I didn’t remember having.

A body I didn’t recognize. I immediately started making a familiar pact with myself: two-a-day workouts and lettuce for dinner.

I was supposed to be out here getting my postdivorce “Revenge Body”!

Not feeling so angry, so disgusted with myself.

I knew I’d put on some weight since the divorce, but had I let my body change that much?

I started to cry. The anxiety hives began to claim residence over my neck and chest as a shitty memory flashed through my mind, one from just a few years earlier, when an outfit and my too-big body had left me feeling defenseless.

You really want to wear that in public?

I shook my head to clear away the douchey voice.

I had to get out of there. I left the suits in a puddle on the pin-covered floor and apologized silently to Francis, who would have to clean up my mess.

I shoved myself back into my own clothes, which suddenly felt too tight and all wrong.

I had to jam my arms into the coat sleeves as though they’d shrunk in the past thirty minutes.

I threw the hat into my bag and barged out of the dressing room. It must have been a thousand degrees.

I think … that you think you look cool in that outfit, but I don’t think you realize what you actually look like .

I tried to breathe like my therapist had instructed: in-two-three-four-five-hold-hold-exhale-two-three-four—it wasn’t working. Too hot. Too many numbers. Everything too tight. His stupid-ass laugh, the one he does when “he’s just kidding around,” but isn’t.

You kind of look like your dad in drag , he said, smirking at his own joke.

You look like a football player who tried on the cheerleader’s outfit by mistake. He was on a roll. There was no stopping him once he started his roasts.

It was as though they were playing him from the sixth floor’s loudspeakers. I had to get out of there. I pressed the down-elevator’s call button. Pressed it again. Pressed it again. Press-press-press-press. Too slow, couldn’t wait.

My pace quickened as I made a beeline for the escalator, which I ran down. Then I kept running, across and down, from one floor to the next, causing horrified women and men to jump out of my way.

Elephant stampede , I imagined them crying out.

Take cover! It’s King Kong!

Make way , I pictured them yelling down to the floors below me. Hagrid is BIG mad!

I burst out of an emergency exit and onto the street.

If I set the alarms off, I didn’t hear them.

I crossed the street and ran two blocks south, until the cold wind was punching me in the chest, making me cough, stopping me in my tracks.

I leaned against the side of the building, took out my phone, and texted Noor that I had a dog emergency and needed to go.

I said a quick prayer to the dog gods asking them to forgive me for that one.

The last thing I needed was for my dogs to fall apart on me in real life.

Then I resumed walking down Fifth Avenue at a late New Yorker’s pace, until my breathing started to calm down a bit and my mind stopped spiraling quite so fast. I could do this, I told myself.

I could lose the weight. I had a solid diet program in place: salads only, dressing and everything on the side.

Hard-boiled eggs with mustard, that’s it.

I’d eat those at home because something about an office amplified their smell.

I’d stick to black coffee and plain berries at my business breakfasts.

I’d do Pilates in the morning, spin class after work.

Four weeks remained until I needed to pack for the Bahamas.

I could drop twenty pounds by then, easy. I had time.

As I started walking down Fifth, dodging meandering tourists struggling to catch the rhythm of a Manhattan sidewalk, my breath started to even out.

I felt myself gaining some control of the swirling, panicked chaos in my head.

I had a plan, I had a plan. I dug through my purse for my AirPods, shoved them in my ears, and hit play on Chappell Roan Radio.

I immersed myself in a fake music video all the way to Fifty-Third Street, where I stormed down the steps of the E train station and charged through the turnstile.

My brain replaced anxious thoughts with angry ones.

Anger felt so much better. Power! Fury! Rage!

Screw those swimsuits. Screw those dressing rooms. And screw my asshole ex-husband.

I removed an AirPod to hear an overhead announcement.

“The downtown. E train. Will arrive. In. Ten. Minutes.”

Across the platform, two teens ran down the steps, yelling “Go, go, go” at each other while laughing. The uptown train closed its doors and started pulling out of the station.

I kept staring ahead, straight toward the strip of wall that had been blocked by the idling train. I squinted, my eyes taking a minute to adjust to what was in front of me.

It was him. Plastered on a peeling billboard framed by dingy subway tiles: Zack and his stupid smirk.

What’s worse is that I’d actually orchestrated the photo shoot for this six months ago.

He was grinning, taunting me in a larger-than-life-size frame.

The Zack Attack—America’s #1 Ranking Sports Podcast. Tune in Today.

My immediate impulse was to leap across the platform and draw a dick on his face.

I was thirty-five, recently divorced, fatter than I had ever been in my life, and fully haunted by the voice of my ex-husband.

Meanwhile, my ex, who has had everything handed to him like he’s some sort of helpless little baby prince, smiled across from me on a billboard campaign that I’d helped him land, like he didn’t have a damn care in the world.

I felt used. Spit up and chewed out. Was this part of the dream I’d moved to New York to chase?

No, I decided. Fuck that.

Then I made myself a promise.

This was the lowest I’d ever felt.

Which meant it was time to start climbing back up.